The Introduction by Michael Meyer summarizes the problem well.
Unfortunately, his writing displays the haste in which he wrote -- and so do the book’s reviews. R. P. Blackmur laments that “there is hardly a literary question that it does not fail to raise and there is hardly a rule for the good conduct of novels that it does not break” (Nation, October 1935). Despite the many reviewers who complained about the novel’s loose melodramatic plot, flat and even corny characters, weak cliched dialogue, padded political discourse, awkward sentimentality, and heavy-handed satire and irony, many also judged the book to be a timely caveat and applauded its propagandistic value against fascism.
I found the work to be all of these things. Fatally unserious, to my way of thinking, until, suddenly, it becomes deadly serious. As my old creative writing teacher used to say, none of that is earned.
Famously written during the time of rising fascism in the 1930s, it is about full-throated fascism taking over America during that same time period. In this fictionalized counter-history, there are many early signs of American fascism -- as there actually were in the 1930s and 1940s -- the patriots of the America First movement, with their charismatic leader and their purity tests and a collection of semi-organized brownshirt militias ready to enforce them extralegally. But when their leader, U.S. Senator Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, wins the presidential election, the remaining dominos fall in rapid succession.
Solemnly, for once looking a little awed, a little like a small-town boy on Broadway, Windrip took the oath, administered by the Chief Justice (who disliked him very much indeed) and, edging even closer to the microphone, squawked, “My fellow citizens, as President of the United States of America, I want to inform you that the real New Deal has started right this minute, and we’re all going to enjoy the manifold liberties to which our history entitles us -- and have a whale of a good time doing it! I thank you!”
That was his first act as President. His second was to take up residence in the White House, where he sat down in the East Room in his stocking feet and shouted at Lee Sarason, “This is what I’ve been planning to do now for six years! I bet this is what Lincoln used to do! Now let ‘em assassinate me!”
Aw shucks, Mr. Lewis, you shore seem to be lambasting those self-important small town folks like you do in all yore other novels, ain’t you?
Except, this ain’t one of his other novels.
His third, in his role as Commander-in-Chief of the Army, was to order that the Minute Men be recognized as an unpaid but official auxiliary of the Regular Army, subject only to their own officers, to Buzz, and to High Marshall Sarason; and that rifles, bayonets, automatic pistols, and machine guns be instantly issued to them by government arsenals. That was at 4 P.M. Since 3 P.M., all over the country, bands of M.M.’s had been sitting gloating over pistols and guns, twitching with desire to seize them.
Fourth coup was a special message, next morning, to Congress (in session since January fourth, the third having been a Sunday), demanding the instant passage of a bill embodying Point Fifteen of his election platform -- that he should have complete control of legislation and execution, and the Supreme Court be rendered incapable of blocking anything that it might amuse him to do.
By Joint Resolution, with less than half an hour of debate, both houses of Congress rejected that demand before 3 P.M., on January twenty-first. Before six, the President had proclaimed that a state of martial law existed during the “present crisis,” and more than a hundred Congressmen had been arrested by Minute Men, on direct orders from the President. The Congressmen who were hot-headed enough to resist were cynically charged with “inciting to riot”; they who went quietly were not charged at all. It was blandly explained to the agitated press by Lee Sarason that these latter quiet lads had been so threatened by “irresponsible and seditious elements” that they were merely being safeguarded.
And things get violent from there, with riots, and concentration camps, and political murder. It all happens in too rapid succession. Maybe it felt like these things were possible in 1935, but none of it feels remotely possible, even speaking now, in another time of rising fascism.
Case in point:
None of the changes was so publicized as the Presidential mandate abruptly ending the separate existence of the different states, and dividing the whole country into eight “provinces” -- thus, asserted Windrip, economizing by reducing the number of governors and all other state officers and, asserted Windrip’s enemies, better enabling him to concentrate his private army and hold the country.
What? Really? The president abolished the states? By fiat? Yeah. Good luck with that.
The tale is told through the eyes of one Doremus Jessup, a newspaper editor who sees Windrip's fascist policies for what they are ahead of time and who becomes Windrip’s most ardent critics, despite the acquiescence of members of his own family. It is in this argument with his son, Lewis manages to place in Jessup’s mouth perhaps the best line in the entire novel.
“The only thing you ought to think of Windrip is that his gangsters murdered your fine brother-in-law! And plenty of other men just as good. Do you condone such murders?”
“No! Certainly not! How can you suggest such a thing, Dad! No one abhors violence more than I do. Still, you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs---”
“Hell and damnation!”
“Why, Pater!”
“Don’t call me ‘Pater’! If I ever hear that ‘can’t make an omelet’ phrase again, I’ll start doing a little murder myself! It’s used to justify every atrocity under every despotism. Fascist or Nazi or Communist or American labor war. Omelet! Eggs! By God, sir, men’s souls and blood are not eggshells for tyrants to break!”
Men’s souls and blood are not eggshells for tyrants to break. I just wish such a line was in a novel that took itself seriously. It would have likely had much more resonance there. As would this other wonderful lesson:
“More and more, as I think about history,” he pondered, “I am convinced that everything that is worth while in the world has been accomplished by the free, inquiring, critical spirit, and that the preservation of this spirit is more important than any social system whatsoever. But the men of ritual and the men of barbarism are capable of shutting up the men of science and of silencing them forever.”
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This post appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.
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